Shades Of Grey
by Greylle
Summary: different POV of the Xanadu Events, based on "Liquid Courage" by Ed Becerra


Shades of Gray While i was looking for something else, i ran across Shifti-dot-org and the Xanadu stories. At least some of which i was familiar with due to Ed Becerra and his story "Liquid Courage" where an avatar of myself appeared. After re-reading that i got to "The Prince Of All Saiyan" where i appeared again as a recurrent character. A couple of points in both stories had me scratching my head at my avatar's actions, and so this.

So credit where credit is due. Xanadu is from Bryan Derksen.

* * *

Once upon a time, Kublai Con was a science fiction convention. Kubla Con is unrelated and on another coast. Kublai Con was bigger and went across genre/type categories. Kublai Con attracted Star Wars fans, anime fans, Star Trek fans, Bablyon 5 afficionados, gamers of various types and subgroups, Collectible Card Game enthusiasts, Renaissance Faire types who were into one fantasy series or another, those who enjoyed military SF, and those who dabbled with fare such as Harry Potter or even the supernatural romance novel reader.

There were groups that, even in the inclusiveness of the SF crowd - tended to stick to themselves and get a bit of avoidance from the rest. At least until the Event. Things got mixed up a bit after that.

Xanadu was the name of the hotels it was stretched across. Because of the Kublai Con, no matter what hotels were involved - it all became lumped under the fan-name of Xanadu due to that old poem. It was an in-joke, and SF fans LOVE in-jokes.

If you were there, you know what happened at Xanadu. If you were not there, you probably have heard one of way too many conspiracy theories or stories about the whole thing. Denials of the whole thing happening, sometimes spoiled by one of those affected attending the meeting and proving that special effects can only go so far.

Kublai Con was something that wasn't on my planner. It was in Florida that year after all, and at that point my home was in Arizona. Where the seasons come in reasonable for 3/4 of the year and then unbearably hot for the last part. When one's budget is as often tight as mine was, one did not normally include trips across the country or hotel rooms.

Nonetheless, this one managed to somehow overcome my natural stinginess and I had arranged to share a room with three others to cut down on the expenses. Two cosplayers and a gamer in fact, not that any of us were particularly devoted to that hobby. I had a "Son Goku" costume from when I had done an "Anime Expo" convention in Los Angeles, so I stashed that one and one of my Original Character type costumes - Grayl Grayfang, urban wizard of a magitek setting. Meh. Not that I thought it would do anything more than maybe break the ice in conversation.

Everyone who was at the Con, even those few who weren't in any sort of costume that night, remembers the Event. A wave of dizziness, feelings of disorientation. Some got blinding headaches that were over a moment later.

It was like being pulled in four directions at the same time for me. I ended up focussing on the strongest of the four as things went down. I felt massive pain, followed by feeling better than I'd ever felt in my life.

I was...

I was Son Goku, martial artist who'd been raised by Son Gohan. I was Saiyan (or was it Saiyajin?) and had a wife named Chi-Chi and two sons. My favorite hobby was getting into fights with really strong people.

I was Greylle, a silver dragon priest who specialized in divination and healing magic. I spent most of my time in human form, the better to interact with the fascinating short-lived races around me.

I was Greyf Greyhammer, dwarven priest and mage.

I was Grey, who had created an anime fanclub in Phoenix named after the Metrocenter area where it was based - known more for writing fanfiction than anything else.

I was Susumu Kodai, the SCA-based L'etoile De Lune kenjutsu student/wandering swordsman.

I was...

Not only was I having trouble with sorting out memories, there was the input from extra senses. I'd lost my sense of smell due to some pretty horrible sinus infections that hit when I moved to Arizona. I was suddenly hit by a barrage of scents clamoring for attention. That was NOTHING compared to the ki sense though. I'd never been able to detect or sense any such thing before, and now here was a whole new sense and it was giving me the rough equivelant of a Red Alert with Multiple Bogeys Inbound.

Eventually I shoved that down too. First, figure out how much trouble I was in - then work out the 'what the hell just happened' part.

[Multiple Magical Signatures. Analyzing Energy Wave.]

"Quiet," I told my Nyoibo staff. Which I'd outfitted with a wristwatch as part of my nod towards my techwizard character. Except it wasn't fake anymore and it wasn't a watch anymore. Instead one end of the staff was fitted with metal hieroglyphs and a crystalline disc.

[Stealth mode.]

There was too much craziness around me, so I did something instinctive - just going on automatic. Two fingers pointed at forehead, and space shifted around me so that I was in the room we'd rented.

Instantaneous Movement. One of Son Goku's advanced chi techniques.

That really started a rush of uncertainty about the whole identity issue. Who was I? If memories were what made us who we are, what shaped our reactions to events and viewpoints, then what did it mean when we remembered being someone else?

I couldn't have been more than a few minutes when the shadows darkened in one corner of the room. I felt his presence a bare moment before that but in my current mental state - it took his physical presence.

An old friend, gaming buddy, and one of those others who'd ended up in this circus. Morgan Wright. Who'd come in the character I'd written him as in one set of stories, as Obsidian - the Silver Millenium Knight. Unlike Endymion, or Tuxedo Mask, from that series who'd embodied Hope - Obsidian had powers over Fear.

I prepared myself as the darkness gathered. If I were confused about MY identity, then what about Morgan? Would this be Morgan, Obsidian, his favorite gaming character (which was a Malkavian vampire from "Vampire:The Masquerade"), or his D&D character - a high level ranger?

"Put that away," said Morgan, looking at the hand holding a golden glow. "We've got real problems."

"What?" I asked, putting the teleport together with Obsidian's abilities. Shadow-port.

"Everyone's become their costumes," said Obsidian/Morgan. "The zombie cosplayers and the vampire larpers..."

I couldn't help it. It was something very appropriate to the situation but something that Son Goku would absolutely not say. "Oh. Shit."

* * *

It was exactly as bad as others have painted it. Taking down a Master-level vampire that is mad with bloodlust and hunger is made a LOT more difficult when you're trying not to hurt anyone. I went in with martial arts. Obsidian drew a sword suitable for his ranger, Mannin Shades, and we blocked a amjor corridor.

That lasted until the clerics and mages could arrive and start reinforcing the position. I missed most of the details, as I and Obsidian continued as basically security guards. Except that NORMAL security guards wouldn't do any good right then. Zombies. Something else that I've never quite understood the appeal of.

It turned out the Postponed Zombie Apocalypse took about an hour and a half before we were pulled from perimeter guard duty to deal with supervillains who had a little restraint problem. The only problem one of those was someone who came as Cthulhu. Yeah. Elder horror, except he wasn't all that horrific. Just fast, agile, and having a rubbery body. Someone who had gone as Andromeda Saint Shun wrapped him in chains and the magic chains apparently had the right juju to hold Mini-Cthulhu in place.

Again, it would have been easy for Obsidian to decapitate him or for me to blast him across three time zones. Trying to capture instead of kill is a LOT trickier.

Obsidian and I split up at that point. He was trying to contact the others from our room, I was keeping an eye out for other people going around acting badly.

Which was when I was cornered.

Someone glanced at my badge, and began ranting and raving about my unfair treatment of his favorite character.

I tried pointing out that I didn't dislike Akane Tendo. I just didn't see her as being that great a character. I pointed out that I only started getting nasty about her in stories after the first death threats from the FanFiction Mailing List started coming my way. Computer viruses and other attacks began arriving, which further made me less sympathetic to their cause. Yeah, maybe I should have just put them all on a floppy disc and sent them to the FBI. Don't they have enough to do without dealing with disgruntled fanboys though? Had it happened today, yeah, it would have all gone to the FBI and local police. Live and learn.

I'd just finally had enough, as the fanboy railing against someone who looked like Son Goku drew enough attention that we now had a small crowd. It was pointed out later that being able to focus on something relatively normal like that was attractive to people otherwise going into shock over everything else.

I finally blew up. "She's a complete and total maniac. Violent, uncute, flatchested - and the way she treats him-"

It ALWAYS happens like that. Before the Event, before Xanadu. Even if you're not into SF or anime or anything else. Someone will pester and poke and be annoying as all hell, and when you finally have had enough - boom. Someone's got you on camera or tape recording. Then comes the lawyers and all the other various people to talk about what a horrible person you are. OR, someone comes up to you who is a genuine threat.

When VEGITA interrupted, looking as if he desperately wanted to get into a fight, that had a very welcome effect. The crowd around me, and the fanboy who'd cornered me, left. Rapidly. Most likely going to find a bomb shelter and crawl under it.

Son Goku and Vegita get into a fight. The loser of the fight? Whatever happened to be at Ground Zero.

No fight, which was good. I'd managed the one Instant Movement, but hadn't done anything like that since then. Getting into a knockdown/drag-out with another insanely powerful martial artist type was NOT a good thing for the neighborhood and I was quite aware of the police presence that had been slowly trickling in during the past hour.

I didn't drink, Vegita did and does, and I just trusted him to be able to realize when he'd had enough. It didn't seem to have ANY physical effect on him though, he put away a sixpack of some import beer at the hot dog stand and another at the supermarket. Never so much as a slurred word.

That the hot dog place had turkey dogs was more than welcome. I couldn't eat pork or beef, not without major gastrointestinal problems. A side effect from going Vegan in the seventies is that when I decided that it wasn't working was that I stopped being able to digest certain foods during my abstinence. The lactose intolerance was much later.

I dropped the food from the supermarket off in the hotel room and informed them that the police had locked down the place.

Obsidian, Morgan, Mannin - whatever. Cussed. He had... a history. Not all of it bad, but not all of it good.

That left the other two. Who were people that Morgan had known more than myself, and were currently two elves. One dark elf ninja and one high elf priestess. Both of whom we'd seen briefly during the attempted zombie uprising but been too busy to say hello at the time. They had been doing fine and not been in danger, that'd been all the detail we'd been able to focus on. Better than fine as it turned out. Adriana Of The Light had some serious power over the undead and a few Raise spells that replenished themselves daily. Darana the Silent Blade was another story. Both remembered enough of their past to recognize us, but they were mostly taken over by their characters. That would change over the next few weeks, as they actively tried to remember details and concentrate on who they'd originally been.

Morgan was the first to declare that he was NOT going to leave himself open for scientific experimentation, bureaucrats legislating him into wearing tracking equipment, or any of a dozen other scenarios we discussed. I went off to think about it, met up with Vegi - Rob again, and we tried flying from the roof. It was weird and felt odd, but we did it.

When I got back, after the superhero meeting, there was some luggage missing as well as my three roomies. There was a note, basically saying that they weren't going to wait and see how it was all going down while being under house arrest.

Between his ranger abilities and his talents as Obsidian, I was just hoping that there wasn't a trail of dead bodies as Morgan slipped away. Darana would probably slip away even easier. Adriana might have been a problem, tall blonde elf in priestess costume after all, but I never heard anything until MUCH later.

We had the superhero meeting the next day. Rob mentioned every physical ailment he had was gone. At which point things clicked and I realized my lactose intolerance was probably gone. I decided to investigate.

I used to reward myself down at the Sonic Drive-In every payday with a pineapple (sometimes another flavor) sundae. Then I started having troubles about an hour to three hours after I had one. It got worse. I stopped the habit, the problems stopped. Unless I ate something else with a milk product in it.

Lactose intolerance hits a number of people in their later years. Once again, I hit the crappy end of the odds in life. There were other telling aches and pains missing, but I took the opportunity to get re-acquainted with dairy. Ah, milkshakes. Pizza. How I had missed you.

So we had the superhero meeting, I came back to an empty room.

The only notable thing was that on the way out I noticed a TARDIS, door open and people ducking in. I was incredibly tempted, but passed them by, just wishing them luck. Something had bothered me about that and it took me nearly an hour to remember it.

There had been someone I'd seen the morning before the Change who'd made a TARDIS costume. Was this the same guy, who was now an inanimate (if extremely powerful and somewhat tempramental) object? The whole Personality Death aspect had been shot around a few places where I'd heard it - and this was a new and disturbing idea. I think more than a few of us had sleep-deprived nights from the implications and the near-miss of that particular bullet.

You've heard Vegita/Rob's story, and you've heard from Tony. We went to Larkspur, then to a little ghost town in Arizona. It's surprisingly easy to find little places like that from the air, and we set up a little refuge while we waited for things to settle.

There were other events, of course. You've heard about the Anarchist Supervillains, some of whom were heroic characters in the source material. That was a tough time for some, just waiting on the sidelines until someone decided the Godzilla Threshold was passed and they could send in the supers.

I met up with several others, as I was getting building supplies in North California at the time. We were having money troubles up in Paradisio (the name of the ghost town we'd taken over and rebuilt) and the idea of being able to operate openly instead of continually staying under the radar was a pretty strong draw.

You've probably read the reports, seen the footage. The Anarchist Supervillain Revolution mainly held to the basic ideas you hear about from groups like that. Every corporation is corrupt, all CEOs were evil, capitalism is inherently immoral - that sort of thing. If they hadn't had superpowers and started throwing cars through bank windows, everyone involved would have just shrugged and gone about their usual day-to-day.

Of course, because they DID have superpowers and because they WERE throwing cars through windows - it got a lot more attention and a lot less sympathy.

We went in without any organization or plan, but in defense of that - none of us knew anyone else other than a vague idea of what our characters could do in our individual series.

Yeah, so it didn't exactly go well. Our werewolf got flattened by a thrown car. Being a werewolf, she got better on the next full moon. As this was during the day and a week away from that full moon - it pretty much took her out of the battle.

I'd only caught a look at the coverage on CNN while at the Home Depot picking up those plumbing supplies. So I knew we were up against some heavies. The Abomination, Captain Boomerang, one of the versions of Superman, and three I didn't recognize but heard someone describe as minor Batman villains.

Captain Boomerang was using some smashed-up vehicles for cover as he was NOT bulletproof and there were police snipers waiting to take him out if he showed himself. The Superman type apparently didn't have X-Ray Vision or wasn't using it for some reason. He still reacted really damn fast. As he was the potentially most powerful and problematic, I went after him. My first attack was a high speed grab intended to get both of us out of town and fighting over the water. Good plan, huh? Too bad he figured out what I was doing and stopped us both cold.

That was one of the more savage beat-downs I've gotten since the change. If it weren't for those sunflower seeds I'd had in old gaming dice bag at the Xanadu Event and thought of as senzu beans - it might have taken me months to get over that fight. Superman, ANY Superman, is not an opponent to take lightly.

So I started off fighting Superman, who was apparently a DCU animated series version. All the sparring sessions with Rob/Vegita came in handy, as without those I wouldn't have been able to go to Super Saiyan. In that fight I went to Super Saiyan II for the first time. I even tried a quick spell and my magical staff - but apparently this Superman had no vulnerability to magic. Even then I was hard pressed to keep up until Piccolo showed up.

Yeah, someone had gone as Piccolo from later in the Z storyline and been at the Event. He wasn't a match for this Superman either, but two-on-one meant that we could at least tag-team the guy. Then the two Ranma (or the Ranma and the Ranko) that I'd been training alongside with Rob showed up and started taking pot shots at him from a distance. Not that Rob showed up, it would later turn out that he was off dealing with some unresolved story from his past prior to Xanadu.

You name the manuever and we were trying it. Against Superman's reaction time and nigh-invulnerability - it was like chipping away at a mountain. Even when he didn't avoid a Kaio-ken Enhanced Kamehaha - it didn't do nearly enough.

Eventually though - we did wear down the mountain enough. Most of that fight was recorded by reporters who had the sense to film from way far away. Heck, some of it was picked up by satellites.

I later found out that two Klingons had been killed fighting the Abomination and Captain Chameleon died four hours later from taking an exploding boomerang to the face. (Give the guy points for guts at least - considering his powers were hardly up to handling even a Spider-man villain.) However, a police sniper managed to tag Captain Boomerang and pretty much ended that villain's career and keep anyone else from suffering the explosive boomerang fate.

Once the Abomination was down and Evil Superman was out of the picture - the "minor Batman villains" gave up peacefully. They hadn't thrown anything through anything or even been particularly menacing, so they got a lighter sentencing.

At which point I found out that Obsidian was back, and had taken down the Abomination. One of the big guns of the Marvel Universe, stronger and bigger and uglier than the Hulk (at least until the Hulk got a mad on) - taken down by a guy in a black duster and a pair of reflective sunglasses who just talked him down. And probably had trouble sleeping for a month afterward. Obsidian is the Knight of Fear after all.

So we had a bit of a reunion. Made plans that never went anywhere. Parted on relatively good terms.

When I got back to Paradisio with the building supplies, I found the next problem had already arrived. Seems that we were seen as squatters on a historic site. We ended up relocating to Larkspur in Colorado with a bunch of others.

It was either that or begin a war of escalation. Sure we could possibly have won, but how much damage and how many lives would that have taken?

On the way to Larkspur, stopping at a truckstop in Tucson, I got hit with a sniper bullet. In the head. Just for that record, that hurts.

I found the ki signature easily enough, then went with Instant Move and caught the guy before the gun could be taken apart. No identification, but one of our group had some military or police experience (I never asked because some people are pretty sensitive about that sort of thing) and pointed to various parts of equipment and said it was CIA. Which is illegal, as far as I know, within the borders of the United States. Which left FBI or some similar agency.

Which kind of got past the issue of having a large caliber bullet which had just smacked me in the head. Prior to that - I hadn't known I was bulletproof. Son Goku in the series had been hit a few times with bullets and they'd just caused comic relief damage. If it had been aimed at one of the two Saotome twins - they'd likely have died, so I was pretty upset about it.

Vegita was in Vegita Mode and just told me to grow a pair.

You've heard about Larkspur already, so I'll just leave that part blank. Ranma and Ranko pretty much fit in. I was kind of a fifth wheel, and that would probably be giving myself too much credit.

Face it, everything I could do there - not only could someone else do it better - they'd look better doing it. Most of it, there was a lot of people better qualified for any given task.

Which is why, after a year, I left Larkspur. I had an idea of hunting down and joining some other group, maybe construct a Lagrange O'Neill Colony like in the Gundam was my intention at least.

Which brings me to here and now. At the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Apparently I was not completely bullet-proof. At least I think it was a bullet. Could have been something similar I suppose. It certainly looks like a bullet wound.

So here I am, using what is left of my magic to put the story of my life on computers that come close enough for me to reach. Hoping that someone gets word to Larkspur and puts the warning out.

Whoever is hunting down the survivors of Xanadu is out there, and they're getting smarter.


End file.
